Volkswagen Financial Services (UK) Limited appoints EuroDirect to build marketing database

Volkswagen Financial Services (UK) Limited has chosen data specialist EuroDirect to build, manage and host its Consumer Financial Services Database.

EuroDirect will be responsible for constructing the new database from the five existing datasets held by Volkswagen Financial Services (VWFS). Each currently supports one of the company's product lines including: finance agreements, payment protection on finance agreements, motor insurance policies, GAP Insurance policies and fixed-cost maintenance plans.

The Consumer Financial Services Database will create a single customer view, allowing VWFS to further develop its customer communication strategy. With a greater insight in their customers' financial product ownership, VWFS can segment and analyse their customer base to drive cross-selling activity.

EuroDirect will manage, maintain and host the database taking in regular data feeds from each of the product divisions. The database will be recurrently validated and enhanced against Royal Mail's PAF whilst being suppressed against the GAS file, the Mailing Preference Service and Volkswagen Financial Services' own internal suppressions. The database will also be appended with EuroDirects suite of postcode level CAMEO Classifications (including CAMEO UK, Income, Financial, Investor, Property and Unemployment) to aid customer segmentation and targeting using variables as diverse as geodemographics, income, credit risk, financial sophistication, property price and economic inactivity.

VWFS will be able to access their database 24 hours a day, 7 days a week using Intelligence Creation, EuroDirect's rapid web-based data counting and analysis tool which will enable them to mine, profile and model their own data, plan campaigns and extract targeted mailing lists.

Philip Grisewood, Communications Manager, Volkswagen Financial Services comments:
"For the first time Volkswagen Financial Services is able to store customer data for all financial and insurance customers in one single application. This allows us to profile customer groups holding only one or two products and target sales activities and product communications to these specific customer segments. This will give us the intelligence to manage, monitor and measure our campaigns more effectively whilst improving response and cross-sell rates."

John Dobson, Managing Director, EuroDirect comments:
"Volkswagen Financial Services has demonstrated a commitment to investing in its customer data in order to successfully drive its future marketing, and to provide its customers with more targeted and relevant communication. Today's marketers should take heed of this example, and focus their efforts on achieving a single customer view. Evolving their use of customer data will improve campaign performance and make full use of this valuable customer insight."